


Even if I come back (even if I die)

by demonn



Series: I’ll do anything for you [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Past Drug Use, Reginald Hargreeves A+ parenting, diego just really loves his brother ok, klaus tries to kill himself a lot, mentions of the mausoleum, two sad boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 08:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17895083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonn/pseuds/demonn
Summary: You carved a monster out of a boy and called it a hero.





	Even if I come back (even if I die)

**Author's Note:**

> Just some klaus and Diego angst. Minimal fluff because I can’t always write fluff and pretend that this AU isn’t fucked up.
> 
> Btw, stuttering Diego because it’s my head canon (and maybe canon) that he stutters when he gets emotional.

The voices are never silent, never completely silent at least, and that is a fact of life. No matter what Diego or Ben done to block them out, they would always come back, they would always crawl their way back into his head. It was torturous and painful and that slow ache in the name of his neck was ever-present.

Diego had taken to pressing his hand to the back of his head and feeding him glasses of water until it was safe to say that it didn’t feel like someone was trying to slide his brain out of his head using an sledgehammer. Ben had taken to trying to fight the woman that liked to appear sometime, crying out in the corner of the room (always there, always crying always crying for her baby, for her klaus, for her son)

It hadn’t helped though, and the encounters with the more violent ghosts always left him screaming and shaking and uncertain, even more in pain than he normally was. Most of that pain could be traced from his extensive drug abuse history, but a tiny sliver of it always belonged to the voices.

When he was younger, not as fucked up, Mom had asked him if he thought someone shared his body. He had been much to young (5, 6, maybe 7) but he’d understood, he had to understand otherwise the pain would be coming from daddy’s hand across his face and not from the voices. He’d said, yes, of course. How could he not? The woman was there and she was bleeding all over the floor and she was crying for the son that she never got to hold and no one could see her except him.

He’d been put in medicine for schizophrenia when he was 8 and he was thrown in the mausoleum when he was 9 with nothing but his hands and his teeth to fight off the encroaching voices and bodies.

(“ _You have to get over your fear, Klaus. You have to get over your fear if you want your father to be proud of you_.”)

But now he was 27 and there was no mausoleum to throw him into, no dark corners or cemeteries or tight, tight places. Just Diego and Ben and the voices in the back of his mind. No drugs, no alcohol, no mind-numbing devices.

(He tried to drown himself in the bathroom of a gas station. Diego found him and dragged him out by the scruff of his black turtleneck. At lunch, he tried drinking petrol instead. God found him and sent him back before Diego could find him.)

“You know, babes, maybe people like me are just destined for-“ his sentence was cut off, the hand around his neck slowly tighteningas the displeasure on Diego’s face grew.

“Shut up, s-shut up, ok? This isn’t just about you. It’s about me and Ben and having to see you kill yourself twice a day because you have to damage your body some way? D-don’t you?” Diego took a deep breath, his hand loosening.

“I’m fucked up, honey-bunches. Too fucked up for sobriety.” Klaus giggled, high and watery and just on the edge of hysterical. “Even Ben thinks I’m fucked up, but he thinks my sobriety with get me better. The dead are so, so stupid sometimes.”

“Shut up! This isn’t about the voices, this is about you and me! Don’t you think I’m fucked up as well? That what dad did to me didn’t fuck me up! H-how d-d-“ he took another deep breath, “How do you think I got these scars, Klaus? How’d you t-think I got all these sc-scars? It was my punishment, it was my punishment.”

Klaus stilled, shaking and shivering but for once not because of the cold or his need for drugs. “Dad did this to you? I thought in missions-“

“You didn’t think? Did you? I’m number two which means I have to be better than number one which means I’m the one that gets punished if he fucks up because I’m meant to have his back. Throw kn-knives until I get blisters, punch things till my knuckles are ripped, learn the consequences of not bending something perfectly by the third try. You don’t think I didn’t try to kill myself, well suck it up little bro because if that shit don’t w-work, it don’t work. You gotta keep f-f-fighting.”

Klaus had always known Diego was fucked, but he never knew he had been this fucked up. He hadn’t known that Diego had tried to kill himself or that their father (could he even be called that?) had given him some of those scars. That he’d tried to carve a monster out of a boy and called him a hero. They were just kids, they had all been kids. Kids sent to die in the hands of a man convinced he was doing it for the good of the world.

“I don’t want to keep fighting, love, we were raised to fight and that’s all I’ve ever done-“

“Fight for yourself man, not for other people, not for me or Ben or anyone else. F-fight for yourself because one day g-gods going to be tired of bringing you back. One day God’s not going to want to bring you back and I’m not- I’m not like you, Klaus, I won’t be able to see you if you die.”

Diego let go of him, leaving him a heap on the floor. Klaus reached up to rub at his neck, his other hand reaching out to clutch at one of the looser holsters. “Wait, Diego, babes. I’m sorry, ok, I’ll try, I’ll try harder. I won’t try and kill myself again.”

Diego narrowed his eyes at him, gulping slightly as he helped the skeletal man up. “P-p-p-“

“Imagine the word in your head, take a deep breath.”

“P-promise?”

“Promise.”


End file.
